Monday, June 26, 2006

Just so there is no misunderstanding; Gary DeBusk, a gay Tallahassee, FL pastor who has posted on the Internet the names and addresses of Floridians who have signed a petition in favor of a ballot measure defining marriage in that state as being between one man and one woman, was indeed arrested in a sting operation (or, as he puts it, "entrapment") conducted in a known "cruise spot," i.e. a place where men engage in anonymous public sexual acts.

I noted in a Free Republic post on June 24, 2006 that DeBusk acknowledged in his own bio as recently as April 24, 2006 that his cruising arrest was the impetus for the ending of his twenty-two year marriage, and linked to Google's archived snapshot of the Christ Church of Peace website to prove it. However, by the early morning of June 26, 2006, the link to the archived page with the disclosure about DeBusk's arrest had been updated, so now the link goes to his new, revised bio, which acknowledges that DeBusk 'frequented' cruise sites while he was "coping with his sexual repression," but doesn't mention that he was arrested.

It's interesting, is it not, that a man who would proudly use the Internet to expose thousands of people exercising their right to engage in the initiative process to ridicule and harassment would use his own website to hide details of his own history, especially since this was not previously his modus operandi.

Why did the archived page suddenly change from the April 2006 edition with the confession of DeBusk's cruising arrest to the June 2006 edition in which the arrest is not mentioned? It's hard to know for sure. DeBusk has no control over the Google snapshot that is archived when you do a search for his name or the Christ Church of Peace. It's possible that DeBusk contacted Google and requested that a more recent snapshot be taken so that the revised, cleansed page would turn up in a search. But the only ones who could know if that happened would be DeBusk or Google, and it's doubtful either would be forthcoming (especially Google, which has been haughtily dismissive of those criticizing it for failing to live up to its lofty corporate self-image).

...[W]hen one tells the truth it keeps one from getting caught up in the web of deceit. Lying leads to cover-up; which is deceit. It is the cover-up, the deceit, that generally gets people into trouble. Clear examples of this are Presidents Nixon and Clinton—due to cover up one had to resign and one was impeached. The truth could have set them free! Would there have been consequences to the truth? Yes! But I do not believe as severe as the consequences of cover-up. When will people ever learn that it is better to deal with the consequences of truth than it is to deal with the consequences of lying? “The truth shall make you free.”

Now, let me be clear: I am not accusing DeBusk of lying. He has said clearly and openly in the past that he was arrested for cruising (although he says he was "entrapped"). But in not being open as he previously was about that fact, it clear that he feels he needs to hide it. Why? Only the pastor himself could answer -- but perhaps he, after making a decision to invite scrutiny of the public record of thousands of Floridians, didn't want to invite scrutiny of public records regarding himself.

In the interest of full disclosure, which Pastor DeBusk doesn't seem to be interested in, here is a snapshot of the same bio that I linked to in my Free Republic post from a site called ZoomInfo. Archived on ZoomInfo on the fateful day of September 11, 2001, it can be found at this URL:http://www.zoominfo.com/directory/Gary_Contact_112449926.htm